Three areas dominated the Hungarian scene in 1995--the economy, the stability of the coalition, and foreign relations. To the credit of the coalition, made up of the communist successors--the Hungarian Socialist Party (HSP) and the left-liberal Alliance of Free Democrats--in March the prime minister, Gyula Horn, finally decided to grasp the nettle and to introduce a far-reaching austerity package.

The package was brought in by the new minister of finance, Lajos Bokros, and came to be known as the Bokros package. It was profoundly unpopular. Essentially, it was aimed at trimming the budget deficit by cutting back on government expenditure through introducing new taxes, scrapping allowances, and charging fees in certain circumstances. Furthermore, the Hungarian currency, the forint, would undergo creeping monthly devaluation, aimed at reducing its value against the Deutsche Mark by up to 20% over a year. The central problem was that Hungary had been living beyond its means for many years and subsidizing this through foreign credits. In 1995 the day of reckoning had arrived, not least because the country’s deficit had reached about $3 billion, giving Hungary the highest per capita debt in Europe.

The popularity of the government plummeted; the main beneficiary was the right-wing Independent Smallholders’ Party. It was generally estimated, however, that eventually the coalition would regain its standing, though this would take time. It was notable that the government, not least the prime minister, had not been particularly successful in attempting to sell the Bokros package to the public. If anything, it was imposed with hardly any explanation.

The austerity package was a bitter pill to swallow for the left of the HSP as well. The HSP regarded itself as a socialist party, and cutting welfare benefits was painful indeed. Several ministers resigned, and the left of the party spent a good deal of time grumbling. According to some estimates, anything up to a quarter of the HSP parliamentary caucus could not be relied on to vote for austerity measures. It was to placate the left that Horn sought to promote the trade union leader, Sandor Nagy, to a senior position in the government in August.

But this move, which had not been coordinated with the Free Democrats, nearly destroyed the coalition entirely. The role of the Free Democrats was to provide Horn with the necessary votes to get the austerity package through against his own left wing, but otherwise he had little time for them; he had, after all, been raised as a communist politician, and the subtleties of coalition politics did not figure high in communist politicking.

The attempt to impose a trade union leader on the coalition had the Free Democrats up in arms, and they made the rescinding of the appointment an issue of confidence. Eventually Horn retreated, having thereby lost face with both his left wing and his coalition partner. The general feeling, however, was that the coalition would struggle on, despite the near-constant friction.

Matters were made worse for the coalition by intervention from an unexpected quarter--the Constitutional Court. Under Hungary’s improvised constitution--the old communist document as amended--the court had extraordinarily wide powers of supervision and revision. By the end of the year, it had brought in well over 10 decisions striking down as unconstitutional various parts of the measures put forward in the Bokros package. Bokros tendered his resignation, but he was persuaded to stay on. When all was said and done, the government seemed determined to continue its policies, despite their unpopularity. Whatever the political fallout from the austerity package, early figures indicated that its economic effect was beginning to show positive results, with the Hungarian economy very slowly coming out of the doldrums.

In foreign policy Hungary pursued the options that it had elaborated since the fall of communism--closer integration with the West and attempts to find ways of improving conditions for the Hungarian minorities in the neighbouring states. Unlike the centre-right coalition that lost power in 1994, the present coalition was determined to bring home major successes in both areas. In the event, it did not manage to do so. Its difficulty with Western integration was that the terms, pace, and date were under the West’s control, and Western leaders, despite verbal declarations to the contrary, gave the integration of the postcommunist states a low priority. Horn made a number of statements in which he argued that early membership of the Central European states in NATO and the European Union would be beneficial to the security of Europe as a whole; this met with polite indifference.

There was an equal lack of success with the neighbouring states. The coalition prided itself on its professionalism and sold itself to the Hungarian electorate as being better placed to solve the minority issue than its nationalist-minded predecessor. Unfortunately, it was unable to find negotiating partners in either Slovakia or Romania, where the presence of the ethnic Hungarians was seen as a major threat.